1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, an image processing system and a computer readable medium. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing system, and an image processing method for processing images, and a computer readable medium for the image processing apparatus and image processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A known moving image coding apparatus compares a coded screen image and a to-be-coded screen image in order to identify a changed region within the screen, divides the to-be-coded screen image into a plurality of image blocks, and codes image blocks including the changed region, for example, as disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2828977. When coding the image blocks including the changed region, this moving image coding apparatus assigns a larger number of information bits to image blocks containing a further limited region of the changed region than to image blocks containing the remaining region of the changed region. A known image coding apparatus filters an image signal selectively in at least one of the spatial and temporal axes and codes the resulting image signal, where the image signal is part of an input image signal and corresponds to a region other than a specified region, as disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3046379.
The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2828977, however, requires a special logic to be incorporated into a coder, where the special logic assigns more information bits to particular image blocks such as eyes and a mouth. The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3046379 may reduce the data amount of a moving image to a certain degree by reducing high frequency components as a result of the filtering, but the filtering alone may not be able to achieve sufficient reduction in the data amount of the moving image.